


On The Road

by CaitlynRose



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaitlynRose/pseuds/CaitlynRose
Summary: Ally and Jackson. Between "I'm never getting on that thing with you when you've been drinking. Go wait downstairs" and "That's my songbook. I had this idea on the bike and I didn't want to forget it."





	On The Road

From Ally’s front door to the Mesa Amphitheatre in Arizona, it is about a seven hour drive.

They could have done it in a day. Maybe an overnight on the bus, to allow them to pass the time in sleep. Hell, Jack could have chartered a small plane that would have had them in the air and down again in the blink of an eye.

There was not, strictly speaking, any need to do this journey by motorcycle.

Neither, for that matter, is there really any need - strictly speaking - to _break up_ the journey that they are doing by motorcycle.

And yet, here they are - 5pm and a grand total of 3 hours on the road - standing in the lobby of a hotel somewhere near the Joshua Tree National Park.

It’s not super fancy - not like the places Jack usually stays, Ally would imagine, at least if her recent peek into his tour accommodation is anything to go by. But it’s pretty nice, and it has views out over the mountains, and for Ally, it is magical. She’s flushed and windswept, and she can’t remember feeling such excitement - such a sense of _possibility_ about her own life - in the longest time.

Jack guides her towards the check-in desk, his hand light on the base of her back, and she’d swear she can feel it in every single cell of her body.

“Hey. You got any rooms available? We don’t have a reservation, but it’s just the one night,” Jack says to the dark-haired clerk in front of them.

His name tag reads “Karl.” It takes Ally (and, she can tell, Jack too) about 4 seconds to surmise that Karl is one of those rare, blessed people who has never so much as fucking heard of Jackson Maine.

“Absolutely sir, would that be one room or two?”

Jack hesitates, glancing over at her for confirmation.

And again - it keeps happening, over and over, this feeling - something blooms inside of Ally. He’d been like this before too, she thinks, moments coming back to her in flashes.

_Is that your real eyebrow? Can I try to take it off?_

_Can I touch your nose?_

_All these rings are gonna get stuck if you don’t take em off. May I?_

And then later, even though she had ended up staying in his suite - even though it had seemed fairly likely even before _Shallow_ that she would, and utterly obvious to both of them after it - still he’d told her, sincerely, that he’d set up hotel rooms for her and Ramón.

It was just…well. It was nice. That was all.

She meets Jack’s eyes. All of a sudden she has the very clear sense, the same one she’s had a few times now, that in his face - in this ever so slightly shy, sweet expression - she’s seeing the little kid he once was.

“One’s good,” she says quietly, slipping her hand into his.

 —

Not so much as ten seconds after the door is closed at room 317, they are kissing. Whose idea that is, neither of them would be able to say - only that they look at one another and then it’s happening, fervent and thorough. Just four hands and two faces and nothing else in the world of much importance.

And somehow, Jackson notes, none of the sense he’s had so frequently with women up until now - of ticking boxes, of rounding bases, of _let’s just get to the main event here._

What he feels with Ally, more than anything else, is just fucking ecstatic that she’s even in the room. That she’s here, and she’s staying, and they have _so much time_ now.

He has the opportunity to realize all of this because when they pull apart for air at last- and her chest is heaving and her forehead is pressed against his and her arms are looped around his neck - she says, à propos of nothing in particular, “I’m gonna unpack really quick, okay?”

He laughs his head off.

—

Ally has little more than the clothes on her back, and so the process of unpacking truly is a speedy one - just a question of putting some pyjamas under her pillow, laying out various toiletries neatly beside the bathroom sink. It’s only one night, but still; she always likes to get situated.

Her big suitcase is going to be shipped to her on the tour, hopefully sooner rather than later, and Jack - sitting downstairs with her father earlier this afternoon - had waited over an hour while she’d packed it.

“I can’t even _imagine_ how that conversation went,” she’d said to Jack when eventually they made it down her driveway together. “Or actually, no. More to the point, I _can_.”

When she comes out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom, Jack’s laid out on the bed flipping through TV channels, one arm behind is head.

Before she met him, she probably would have acknowledged - in a removed sort of a way - that Jackson Maine was an attractive guy.

Now, she feels anything but removed about it.

She loves the way his body looks in his clothes, she thinks - so at ease, somehow, the fabric of his jeans and shirts always seeming just loose enough and taut enough at once.

Unconsciously, he seems to sense her attention, and he glances over at her.

What?" he asks, oblivious.

Ally just shakes her head a little. "Nothing."

—

Somehow or other - they certainly don’t make a conscious decision to go through the setlist or anything like that - they seem to end up singing together, working through some of his songs, figuring out where she could come in.

For Jack, his guitar has been his longest friend and ordinarily, he feels kind of naked singing without it. But this evening - in this hotel room in the middle of nowhere, the sun starting to set in a swirl of pink and red outside - it somehow doesn’t even occur to him to feel self-conscious. After all, Ally doesn’t have her piano here either, and yet she doesn’t let that stop her playing it - or, sort of, at least, her voice mimicking the keys in between lyrics.

They sing _Diggin’ My Grave_ from the top, and at the end of it, all they seem to be able to do is grin like a pair of idiots. The song is five years old, at least, but all of a sudden it feels completely new to Jack, like it’s throbbing and alive again.

He loves music. Always has, still really does, couldn't possibly have stuck out the shittiness of fame and the industry if he’d ever stopped. So, is it that Ally has _given him back the joy of song_ , or whatever shit he can well imagine that reporters will be proclaiming pretty soon? Well, he doesn’t know if he’d entirely say that. He’s still proud of the things he’s written, he still gets a buzz from seeing those venues packed to the rafters night after night.

But man, it’s been a while since it’s felt like _this_ much fun.

Even if there was nothing else, he thinks - even if this woman didn’t have a face he just wants to look at, skin he just wants to touch - even just this, just singing with her, would still be pretty fuckin’ awesome.

—

“Hey, so here’s a question,” she says to him quizzically.

They’ve been hanging out - just talking, singing, whatever - and he’s sitting upright on the bed, propped against the pillows. Somehow or other, Ally’s ended up further down the mattress, lying on her front. Her knees are bent and she’s swinging her legs back and forth absently.

“Does your band know I’m coming?” she continues.

“Sure.”

Ally pauses then, raises an eyebrow teasingly. “You were that confident I’d say yes, huh?”

He just laughs, shrugging in a way that she finds adorable. But at the same time, adorable doesn’t really address her concern.

“So, are they okay with it?” she prompts.

Jack frowns in evident confusion. “Whaddya mean?”

“Like, me comin’ on the tour - singing’ and playing and…”

“Why wouldn’t they be okay with it?” he says, still entirely nonplussed.

“Well, just, like, y’know,” Ally fumbles, grasping - even in her own mind - for what she’s really trying to say here. “I guess I don’t want them to be pissed like, oh, all of sudden your girlfriend’s in the mix, y’know?”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she freezes, looking up at him unblinkingly.

Then, with a wince, she drops her head, letting it fall against his torso for a second before she can manage to meet his eyes once more.

“I heard it. The “girlfriend” thing,” she says, a little sheepishly.

“I heard it too,” Jack says, but he sounds cheerful as can be. He’s grinning.

“Is that what I am?”

“I fuckin’ hope so.”

Ally seems to exhale a little. “Well, okay then,” she says, with a happy little laugh that seems to betray more than a hint of disbelief.

“We didn’t even know each other a week ago!” she exclaims a moment later. “I actually broke up with someone literally two hours before I met you.”

“Oh?” Jack asks, and as soon as she sees the shadow of concern cross his features, she wishes she’d kept her stupid mouth shut.

“Oh, no!” she says hurriedly. “I didn’t love him or anything.”

She shifts to sit up beside Jack, one shoulder pressed against the headboard. “I didn’t even really like him to be honest. I mean, he was fine. We went on, like, maybe, 5 dates, total. Most of which I spent bored out of my tits.”

Jack glances pointedly down at her breasts. “Well, that’s not good,” he says dryly.

Ally smiles, shakes her head a little - a gesture of affectionate disapproval that, really, is all affection, no disapproval. She leans in to drop a kiss on his lips.

“So this… it ain’t a… like a rebound thing or anything like that?” Jack continues a second later, once she pulls away. And his tone is all would-be casual, but she’s not fooled. She hates that this is even a question in his mind.

She pauses for a minute, and when she speaks, her voice is low, serious. Instinctively, she feels like it's important that he hear her on this one. “Not a rebound thing,” she says, looking him dead in the eye. “Nothing about this is about anybody else for me. Okay?”

Jack holds her gaze, nods once, decisively. “Okay.”

And she tugs him towards her again, both hands on his face this time, trying to pour everything she feels into this kiss. He responds just as intensely, until they break apart for breath. 

“ _Anyway_ ,” she says then, the words mumbled against his lips. “The point is, I really liked your band. I don’t want ‘em all to just be like “who the hell is this chick?””

“That’s actually pretty much exactly what they said after _Shallow_. But in a good way,” Jack replies smugly.

Ally can’t find much to do in response to that but smile. She still feels like everything in her just glows when she thinks about that performance.

‘’Trust me, they’ll be happy to have you,” Jack continues. “I’m fuckin’ happy to have you.”

“Alright then. Good,” she answers, still smiling, satisfied at last. Or, perhaps she is not so much satisfied as she is persuaded not to what she always does - not to imagine the worst, to not pre-empt problems that don't even exist yet and perhaps never will. 

“How’d you meet ‘em all?” she asks then. “The guys.”

And so, he tells her

—

They order pizzas from room service, and when the food arrives they sit cross legged on the bed, plates balanced precariously on their laps. They waste no time digging in, eating with their hands.

“What’s the verdict?” Jack asks, having wolfed down half a slice already.

Ally seems to consider it. “Pretty good,” she confirms with a nod.

And in truth, the pizza is probably entirely average but - just in life generally -she’s really not a person who’s especially difficult to please. She and Jack actually have that in common, she’s learning.

“I’ll tell you what though,” she adds. “It’s a good thing my dad isn’t here. Any type of Italian food has this way of prompting like a 20 minute monologue from him.”

Jack smiles. “He a cook? Or more just a food critic?”

“Yeah, the second one,” Ally replies with a roll of her eyes. “He did cook a lot when I was a kid though.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean it was mostly just me and him, so he pretty much had to, I guess."

“What about your mom?”

“Mmm.” She scrunches her face. “That’s a long story.”

Jackson nods.

“Will you tell it to me?” he asks then quietly, after a moment. “Only if you want to.”

And wholly, wholly unexpectedly, for what might be the first time ever in her life, Ally finds that she _does_ want to.

—

It’s dark outside now, and they’re watching a movie except that, instead of watching any of the movie, they’ve muted it and undressed each other.

Jack’s approached the job with more diligence than Ally - she's only managed to peel his shirt of by the time he has her down to her underwear.

He kisses her breast, his mouth closing over her nipple and she gasps, grasping at his neck, torn between wanting to kiss him and wanting him to just _keep doing what he’s doing._

He swirls his tongue, and when his hand slides down into her underwear, her hips buck up to meet him, seemingly of their own accord.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses at the feel of her, and he kisses down her stomach as his fingers find her centre deftly, moving in tiny circles.

Ally clutches blindly at his hair. “Please,” she all but moans.

“Please what?” Jack looks up at her, his voice gently teasing, his fingers stalling. “What do you want, Ally?”

“I want to come. I want you,” she breathes out, before she has chance to edit herself, before she can worry whether she might sound stupid, or needy, or too much like a pornstar, or not enough like a pornstar, or…whatever.

Honestly, she never thought it could be like this. Never ever, not for her. She never thought _she_ could be like this.

It wasn’t that her sexual experiences before Jack had all been terrible because, thankfully, they had not. But there had always, she’d found, been an element of, sort of, _management_ on her part - a level of effort that was required in order to make sure both parties had a good time. Or even an okay time.

Now, to be able to just let this happen. To watch his eyes darken in response to her words, to know that he’s into this, and she’s safe with him, and he’s about to make her feel _so good so good so so fucking good._

Well. If Jackson Maine didn’t know a thing about songwriting - if he wasn’t famous, hadn’t invited her on his cross country tour, couldn’t sing a note, Ally can’t help but think that he would still feel like a miracle.

—

“So what’s on our agenda for tomorrow?” She mumbles, and Jack’s surprised to hear her voice. She’s tucked under his arm, one of her thighs slung over one of his, her hand splayed across his chest, and he’s been listening to her breathing slow and steady for the last 10 minutes. He thought she’d fallen asleep.

“Just driving,” he replies, and she murmurs some kind of assent.

And the thing is that in his line of work, Jack’s encountered plenty of undeniably beautiful women - oftentimes gussied up in heels and sparkles and all the rest, oftentimes making a very clear effort, on every level on which effort can be made, to appeal to him. But still there’s no question in his mind that this this clinging armful of a girl beside him - everything about her soft and sated - is absolutely the sexist thing he’s ever known in his life.

“There’s an okay diner about an hour away,” he says then. "Could stop there for some breakfast maybe.”

“Alright,” Ally replies sleepily. "Sounds like a plan.”

Jack just pulls her closer, raises a hand to smooth over her hair. It sounds like a plan to him too.

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, you should think of this as existing in a universe whereby ultimately, everybody lives and nobody dies. Let's just take that as a given. I hope this brightened your day - your comments seriously brighten mine!


End file.
